8 50. CHARLES Υ. 265
Charles-Quint, 1875, 2 vols). Amétptr Picnot: Charles-Quint, Chronique de sa vie intérieure et de sa vie politique, de son abdication et de sa retraite dans le cloitre de Yuste, Paris, 1854. GACHART (keeper of the Belgic archives): Retraite et mort de Charles-Quint au monastere de Yuste (the original documents of Simancas), Brussels, 1854-55, 2 vols. ; Correspondance de Charles-Quint et de Adrien VI., Brussels, 1859. HENNE: Histoire du regne de Charles V. en Belgique, Brussels, 1858 sqq., 10 vols. Tu. Juste: Les Pays-bas sous Charles V., 1861. Givu- SEPPE DE LEVA: Storia documentata di Carlo V. in correlazione all’ Italia, Venice, 1863. RdsLER: Die Kaiserwahl Karls V., Wien, 1868. W. MAURENBRECHER: Karl V. und die deutschen Protestanten, 1545- 1555, Diisseldorf, 1865; Studien und Skizzen zur Geschichte der Reformationszeit, Leipzig, 1874, pp. 99-183. A.v. DRUFFEL: Kaiser Karl V. und die rom. Curie 1544-1546. 3 Abth. Miinchen, 1877 sqq.
IV. Comp. also RANKE: Deutsche Geschichte, I. 240 sqq., 311 sqq.; and on Charles’s later history in vols. II., III., IV., V., VI. JANssEN: Geschichte des deutschen Volkes, II. 131 sqq., and vol. III. WEBER: Allgemeine Weltgeschichte, vol. X. (1880), 1 sqq. PReEscorTt’s Philip IL, Bk. 1, chaps. 1 and 9 (vol. I. 1-26; 296-359). MorTLrEy’s Rise of the Dutch Republic, vol. I., Introduction.
Before passing to the Diet of Worms, we must make the acquaintance of Charles V. He is, next to Martin Luther, the most conspicuous and powerful personality of his age. The history of his reign is the history of Europe for more than a third of a century (from 1520-1556).
In the midst of the early conflicts of the Reformation, the Emperor Maximilian I. died at Wels, Jan. 12,1519. He had worn the German crown twenty-six years, and is called “ the last knight.” With him the middle ages were buried, and the modern era dawned on Europe.
It was a critical period for the Empire: the religion of Mchammed threatened Christianity, Protestantism endangered Catholicism. From the East the Turks pushed their conquests to the walls of Vienna, as seven hundred years before, the Arabs, crossing the Pyrenees, had assailed Christian Europe from the West; in the interior the Reformation spread with irresistible force, and shook the foundations of the Roman Church. Where was the genius who could save
266 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 1580.
both Christianity and the Reformation, the unity of the Em. pire and the unity of the Church? A most difficult, yea, an impossible task.
The imperial crown descended naturally on Maximilian’s grandson, the young king of Spain, who became the most powerful monarch since the days of Charles the Great. He was the heir of four royal lines which had become united by a series of matrimonial alliances.
Never was a prince born to a richer inheritance, or entered upon public life with graver responsibilities, than Charles V. Spanish, Burgundian, and German blood mingled in his veins, and the good and bad qualities of his ramified ancestry entered into his constitution. He was born with his eventful century (Feb. 24, 1500), at Ghent in Flanders, and educated under the tuition of the Lord of Chiévres, and Hadrian of Utrecht, a theological professor of strict Dominican orthodoxy and severe piety, who by his influence became the successor of Leo X. in the papal chair. His father, Philip I., was the only son of Maximilian and Mary of Burgundy (daughter of Charles the Bold), and cuts a small figure among the sovereigns of Spain as “Philip the Handsome” (Filipe el Hermoso),—a frivolous, indolent, and useless prince. His mother was Joanna, called “Crazy Jane” (Juana la Loca), second daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella, and famous for her tragic fate, her insanity, long imprisonment, and morbid devotion to the corpse of her faithless husband, for whom, during his life, she had alternately shown passionate love and furious jealousy. She became, after the death of her mother (Nov. 26, 1504), the nominal queen of Spain, and dragged out a dreary existence of seventy-six years (she died April 11, 1555).!
1 Her sad story is told by the contemporary. historians Gomez, Peter Martyr, Zurita, and Sandoval (from whom the scattered account of Prescott is derived in his Ferdinand and Isabella, III. 94, 170 sqq., 212 sqq., 260 sqq.),
and more fully revealed in the Simancas and Brussels documents. It has been ably discussed by several modern writers with reference to the unproved